mediocre amalgam will have you fantasizing about the movies it copies

Rating: 4/10 (28 June 2003)

"House of 1,000 Corpses" was hyped as a revival of the zombie (or maybe just horror) genre, but turned out to be one of the most contemptible jokes I'd ever seen; so, then, after that false alarm, is Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" the savior of a genre that seems to be played out? Despite a hopeful beginning, the answer is NO. Aside from the extremely annoying music-video edits during the action scenes (which signify that this is, in fact, a zombie movie for the NEW MILLENNIUM), there isn't much in 28DL that hasn't been borrowed from another source. The trans-generational, ethnic mix of heroes (including, yes, a black female survivalist) echoes "Night of the Living Dead"--only here, the characters are weakly-drawn caricatures. The 'zombie disease' theme was mined in "The Omega Man." And the critique of the military as a harsh, dictatorial outfit was handled better in "Day of the Dead" and "The Crazies." The script doesn't expand on these themes in an attempt to create something new--it just recycles them, and had me wishing I was home watching one of the aforementioned movies instead.
4/10